I couldn't care less about how people pay for their cars with their money, and I bore easily when people start bickering about whether leasing or buying is the better option. (Well, that is until the bickering gets really nasty.
) I've leased, I've bought, and my reasons are my reasons.
My informal observation is that once you subtract the 17 year-olds who pay in cash
, the majority of people on automotive forums lease their cars. A lot of them are vocal and defensive about the reason they leased, and they try to blow sunshine up everyone's asses about how leasing is the be-all-end-all and that people who buy are morons. To that minority, I'd point out that there is a reason that car manufacturers offer leases to customers, and it is not so they can make less money on the sale. Having that option lets them sell more new cars more frequently, and they get another chance to make a profit at the end of the lease. Finance guys miss calculating the residual to their favor sometimes, but it is only when a wide scale, unforeseeable economic event occurs.